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The Far East and American Old West have a surprisingly intertwined history, from the Chinese labouring on the railroads, to Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson labouring on Shanghai Noon, which critics described as "A Trainwreck!" Now they're meeting again in your back pocket, with Barrett Alley wallets.

A Texan who actually abandoned fashion design for linguistics in university, Alley spent three years of trial & error figuring out how to take chunky, Western-tradition leather techniques and apply them to thinner materials -- then mined Japanese contacts for vintage fabric to use as lining, so you can impress everyone already impressed that you've actually opened your wallet to pay for something. The essential elements are vegetable-tanned leather from vaunted tanneries (with hunter-harvested deerskin used when cows aren't), plus mid-19th c. hemp indigo lining from Japanese home looms, much of it formerly used in kimonos and futons (so once again, it gets a bum deal). Construction's done by hand, with leather cut by a knife, and saddle-stitching done with actual fingers, leading to finished products ranging from the bi-fold Devilish to the Destiny, which looks like a torn & frayed envelope so ancient, Keith Richards might've used it to deliver a Memo to Turner.

Other styles are lined with antique cream-/red-striped cotton, and Alley also makes similar-quality sunglasses holders and "Petite Pill Pouches", or "the classy way to carry your drugs" -- intended for prescriptions, but also good for the stuff that makes you enjoy Shanghai Noon, then sleep right through the next one.